It will end when i get my hands on the SDK and can begin work on a mod.

I'm really getting sick of the arguement that people who enjoy shooting guns should go and play q3, people who enjoy ctf should go and play ut etc.

I must admit, its been abscent from this thread entirely, however on the rest of the forums this arguement continually rears its head. Its incredibly irritating.

Everything in this game needs to be made more powerful, the guns, the saber, the force. It's the user's responsibility to figure out how to use each of these without getting killed on spawn consistently.

I've completely given up on 1.03 for the moment. I have too much fun playing 1.02 on the select couple of servers I can still find.

The ammo constraints in 1.03 i could live with, so long as the weapons did more damage. It's got to be one or the other, unless the player speed gets shrunk to walking speed, simply because you routinely have to kill someone quite far away from your base simply to keep them from capping. It's like the average amount of time it takes to kill someone has increased substantially, but the movement speed hasnt, so all of the defensive points in all the CTF maps have been shifted outside of what can be considered your base.

That's just flawed, the most dangerous spot in a ctf map should be inside a person's base. This is one reason i dislike garrison so much; the best defensive spot is actually in the middle of the map. It's not utterly apparent to most people, so they run around in circles right next to the flag. You can't really defend, all you can do is interdict. Now the *whole* ctf mode of play is like that, and its terrible. I hate ctf with 1.03 as much as i hate garrison in 1.02.

Eveything needs a significant oomph. The saber *should* be viewed as just another weapon in CTF. It *should* be more useful, but not at the detriment of everything else.

I'm really starting to like al's idea about seperate skillsets for the different modes of play. In a duel, you want a really engrossing and entertaining match against *one* person. In ffa and CTF you want to quickly dispose of one person and move on to the next to accomplish an overarching objective that doesn't have anything to do with the combat you're currently engaging in necessarily. It needs to be fast and significantly less time consuming.

A quick fix would be to up the damage delt in a ffa or a ctf match. Then you could easily un nerf the guns and the game would resume intact.

A more direct fix would be to up the damage against people holding a gun, making the saber a very powerful weapon in the balance of things. The problem is that it would only address ff guns CTF, and in the spirit of trying to pay attention to everyone's complaints, thats not gonna work too well. The damage needs to be upped for sabers vrs sabers apparently as well. And possibly another damage level should be set for duels.

So there's 3 different damage levels that need to be tweaked and seperated, and that would allow the game to at least *flow* right. True, there's another hundered things that need to be done, but seperating and tweaking those damage levels would make the game flow correctly.

Another issue i'd like to bring up, is the force. In JK, all the forces would have been considered vastly overpowered in the light of JK2. However, what JK did right, was give everything a specific use and never keep you from using it. The skill involved was in doing *all* of the things you needed to do at the same time.

It wasn't tic tac to, it was multi dimensional chess played on top of a nascar.

Some things you did constantly, absorb/speed/seeing, were things you left on all the time, not things you used for specific instances. pull/grip/destruction/healing/jump were what you used selectively.

The challenge of course, was not in maintaining your force pool. It was to some extent, you could keep everything on and continue to move as normal for about 5 minutes. At which point you needed mana. So the game *was* essentially fought over mana boosts.

However, there were enough mana boosts that it definitely didn't keep you from doing anything you wanted to. In fact, that was one of the only ways the really talented people could kill eachother, they had to dominate the level and not let their opponent *get* any of those boosts.

They had to do very spectacular and amazing things to accomplish essentially the same thing as *drain*.

And again, let me reitterate, the skill was *not* in what you had just done and thus in conserving mana, it was in actually countering the force use of an opponent. To some extent thats present here, but the focus is definitely more on conserving mana than it is on *using* the force.

JK2 should try to take both of these into consideration. Mana conservation and actual use of the force need to be balanced in such a way that yer never focusing on just one. Then and only then, it will be a better balanced game than JK.

Absolutely, you've hit the nail on the head Lucky. There is no balance in 1.03. Guns are now more powerful than sabres (they weren't before, only whiney newcomer types thought so, and affected this change) But people are camping more ammo because of the constraints. The whole game has slowed to a crawl. There are silly uber-moves that people have no defence against (DFA was easily defended against, only silly whiney newcomer types thought it was unbeatable) Ultra-powerful powers like Absorb, weak sides of the force... like Dark.

Etz and I have been discussing the necessary changes we'd have to make in a mod... The more people who think like that, the better. Power to you Lucky.

As Spider_Al said we've been thinking about the mod. In the end there aren't that many things that need tweaking. We could do with changes to blocking and saber damage at first and then continue from there. Of course we will need the SDK but at least we can talk about the changes while waiting for it to come out.

We-ell, let's just say that a gunner using absorb faces a sabreist of equal skill who is also using absorb... It's a given that the gunner will win that point. Pre-patch, I could hit a gunner twice with my sabre, and kill em straight off, even if they were moving. Now it's much more difficult to kill anyone with vanilla sabre moves.

And should I wish to resort to cheapness, I'd have to have good luck trying to backstab a gunner who's light on his feet, without pulling him over.

The guns haven't reeaally been made stronger per-se, but everything else has been made weaker, so the result is the same.

We-ell, let's just say that a gunner using absorb faces a sabreist of equal skill who is also using absorb... It's a given that the gunner will win that point. Pre-patch, I could hit a gunner twice with my sabre, and kill em straight off, even if they were moving. Now it's much more difficult to kill anyone with vanilla sabre moves.

And should I wish to resort to cheapness, I'd have to have good luck trying to backstab a gunner who's light on his feet, without pulling him over.

The guns haven't reeaally been made stronger per-se, but everything else has been made weaker, so the result is the same.

Gunners always had an advantage over saberists, even prepatch (although in prepatch they weren't as dominant as they are now.)

For Prepatch
If you take out the skill factor, you essentially have:
a) A lightsaber which does 30-100 damage melee that can deflect shots.
b) A gun which does similar damage, and IS RANGED.
c) Force powers

The pure lightsaberist has access to A and C, whereas the pure gunnerist has access to B and C.

However, C is not consistent with both styles of play. If the force mastery level allowed a set amount of force points to be distributed to a set of skills, the saberist would have to distribute 0-13 points to offense (ideally 13 for the offensive swings), 0-13 points to defense, and 0-18 points for throw. This left little room for other force abilities.
On the other hand, the gun-user could use those 0-44 force points on force skills, thus giving him more access to item C than the saberist (which should logically have more access to item C.)

I don't want to get into an argument about whether item A or item B is greater prepatch since there seem to be many people who claim to "kick ass with sabers against every gun user" (although I believe this to be more a deficiency in the gun user's ability than a proficiency in the saberist's ability.) However, it is unarguable that the gunner has greater access to item C.

Post-Patch:
Item C remains the same- gun users have more force points to spend. HOWEVER, this problem is slighlty alleviated since nearly all the force powers now SUCK.

But if you look at how item A and B was tweaked, they really did not do any balancing.

By reducing ammo consumption, the gun user now has even more incentives to avoid (extended/close) confrontations, instead spamming crowds then running to restock. Thus, gunners play even more defensively now- which, combined with their increased force points, makes it even more impossible for the saberists to reach them.

By reducing saber damage and increasing blocking rates, saberists have an even weaker incentive to pursue gun users, since it takes nearly four times the amount of swings to kill a gunner than it used to, and if there are health packs/shield generators around it could prove impossible to kill a gun user with sabers only (unless you pull/backswing him.)

Thus, the saber vs gun imbalance has only been exascerbated by this patch.

Hopefully Raven can expand upon the jedi vs mercenary mod (I've never played this yet) that they've already implimented, as I believe it to be a step in the right direction. Perhaps jetpacks to make up for the mercenary's lack of force jump, special goggles to make up for lack of force sight, a flamethrower equivalent to lightning etc. would fill in for the lack of force powers and make both classes enjoyable to play.

Stratus the biggest problem with your view of things is that you assume 'gunner' means someone who refuses to use a lightsaber.

At this point, it simply means someone who doesn't role play with the lighstick and uses the best weapon for a given situation.

I have no problem with using a saber, and i'd use it more if it didn't put me at such a disadvantage. I still use it probably 10-15% of the time even *with* the patch, simply cause i get my weapon pulled every now and again, and it's good protection while im looking for a different weapon.

If this were class based, which would be a really interesting take on the game, your assessment would be entirely correct. As it is however, the lightsaber is just another weapon to be used like any of the guns when the situation calls for it.

What needs to be done is to boost the saber in relation to the other weapons, not against the type of player that only uses a gun.

Someone sticking to a single weapon should be at an automatic disadvantage, even if it *is* the lightsaber.

Using different weapons strategically has always been a big part of this game, and if the saber were made more powerful it would make it worth using in the context of a game with guns in it as well.

It shouldn't dominate, and it shouldn't be worthless. It should have at least as much use as either the golan or the repeater.

I agree with Lucky on this issue... All weapons have different advantages/disadvantages, and anyone who wants to use one weapon at all times is silly in my view. As silly as a person who aimlessly runs around levels with only a bryar pistol. Sabres have their uses, in different situations, and of course the sabre is stronger in most situations than certain guns such as the disruptor which has little power at close range, and simply weak guns such as the DEMP or bryar. But that doesn't mean that the sabre is all-powerful, nor should it be. In Jedi Outcast every player has "jedi powers" whether they're carrying a gun or a lightsabre. So when a player picks up a gun, he's not a "merc" or a "gunwhore" as some people think, he's a Jedi... with a gun. A Jedi with a gun is, and should be a force to be reckoned with.

There was always an option to play on sabres only servers before the patch. Frankly I think it was the laziness of a certain element in this community that caused Raven to nerf so many things about the game; they were constantly yammering about how guns were more powerful and needed nerfing. Well that was nonsense. The guns were well-balanced with the sabre, in that there were techniques one could use to disarm and/or get close enough to a gunner to kill him. Instead of biting the fricking bullet and going to sabres-only servers, they sought to disempower those who enjoyed target practice as much as fencing practice.

Well, Raven patched it up anyway... but of course it didn't have the desired effect. Sabres are much less powerful now, which means guns are more desirable to use... But there's less ammo, which means more people camp.

Negative negative negative effects. There is very little positive about 1.03, bar No Force sabre duelling mode. That is the only mode that was improved by the patch, and all the others were nerfed.

Quote:

Al, where's this channel at?

Etz is adminning it, mail him at hannu_hurme@msn.com and he'll send you the details! I think the channel's locked and needs a key at the moment, to keep the mad flooders out

invisible absorb hurts alot of things. however, if someone was so hell bent on only using a saber, a weapon which is in essence, a FORCE POWER, then they should realize that with this new version, as with the old one, its a waiting game. A player has an insane amount of mobility with the roll. In 1.03, instead of putting the pressure on a gunner and rolling towards him forcing him to jump and turn off absorb allowing for a pull, a player must now run, evade and hide until their ammo runs out. You either wait for ammo to run out or absorb to run out. Because of the patch, now you MUST wait for ammo and nothing more.

Honestly, I like the slower style of play. And not because I prefer headless chicken action. It's because I like a thought out battle. I like to have to wait for openings and time my moves. And I like the fact that you can actually block. I could stand to see blocking toned down a little, or maybe up parrying instead. IE: make it more likely to knock a blade away than it is now, but leave the blocking the same. Something like that.

Regardless, I like 1.03's blocking system, and I don't care that it's been slowed down.

I don't even mind it in FFA. I do think that CTF probably suffers some, but then CTF with sabres seems goofy to me anyway. I'd rather play that with guns. At any rate, you can downgrade blocking on your server if you want to.

BUT, I have to say that the game is INCREDIBLY boring when you have these one hit kills in it. And you know, there's another one besides the backstab. The front flip is pretty damn powerful too. And I've seen people pulling/pushing/kicking then doing the front flip, which makes it rather hard to block.

I dunno. The game's just getting old for me, I guess. Which is good, because I'm not gonna have DSL for the next three months, so it'll be me and the bots. At least they don't spam moves.

Honestly, I like the slower style of play. And not because I prefer headless chicken action. It's because I like a thought out battle. I like to have to wait for openings and time my moves

Well many people could wait for openings and time their moves... before the patch. And the sabre changes are only one aspect of it. Guns, which you suggest people use, have had their ammo cost increased, therefore more campers abound and the entire game is really a bullet-hunt for gunners. As for FFA sabre fights, well why bother in a mass-blocking group. One backswing does for the lot of em. Play's been severely shrunken and crippled by 1.03... AAgh it's so darn sad! It should have been the greatest competitive game ever... it looked like it might have been... but then the one-month-miracle-patch appeared. Save us from it.